The invention generally relates to computers and computer systems and, in particular, to methods, systems, and computer program products that process online transactions involving a set of products including more than one product supplier.
Modern electronic commerce typically involves the sharing and processing of data across multiple computing systems interconnected by a network. In this environment, transactions for a set of products that involve multiple product suppliers may result in complex interactions between supplier and seller systems to insure that each product is concurrently priced and available. Systems on the buyer side may also contribute to this complexity by providing multiple forms of payment, each of which may require data processing by one or more bank, payment, or secure transaction computer systems. To support increasingly large input data sets and associated data manipulation tasks, which may be distributed across multiple computing systems, On-Line Transaction Processing (OLTP) systems require sophisticated transaction management processes. These processes may manage communication between buyer, seller, supplier, and payment systems, and may employ database optimization techniques to enable processing of large numbers of transactions while providing high availability, speed, concurrency, and recoverability of the online transactions.
Transactions involving a retailer or other indirect seller may be structured in different ways. One way the transaction may be structured is to have the supplier paid using a form of payment provided by the buyer, e.g., a credit card. In this case the supplier may be considered the merchant for the sale of the products, and the seller may receive a commission or service fee from the supplier. Another way the transaction may be structured is to collect payment from the buyer using the form of payment provided by the buyer, and use another form of payment pay the supplier. In this case the seller may be considered the merchant for the products. Being the merchant may enable the seller to control mark-ups and/or discounts on the product, but may also result in the seller being accountable for the payment transactions, so that the seller bears the risk of the transaction being fraudulent. Thus, the seller may want to be the merchant for some products, but not others.
Conventional OLTP systems may have difficulty processing a transaction for the purchase of multiple products structured so that the merchant for one of the products is the seller and the merchant for another of the products is the supplier. For example, attempting to assign different merchants to different products at the time of sale may cause errors in processing the initial transaction, as well as problems rolling back payments if the buyer later requests a refund. Thus, existing OLTP systems may limit how transactions to purchase multiple products can be structured.
Thus, improved systems, methods, and computer program products for OLTP systems are needed that provide increased flexibility in structuring transactions involving the purchase of multiple products.